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<p><SPAN class="panel-title"> Location, Location, Location -- BayCon 2012 </SPAN> <SPAN class="dateline"> 25.05.2012 10.00h </SPAN></p>
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Setting
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<li class="tags">
Location
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<li class="tags">
Scene
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<DIV class="intro">
Your character has to live somewhere, and that somewhere needs to support the story. It's embarrassing to have a great scene all written involving bikini- or Speedo-dressed people, when they all live in the first permanent settlement on the Moon, and only landed yesterday....
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<DIV class="panelists">
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/71053.T_S_Luikart">T.S. Luikart</a> (game designer) - TS</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaz_Brenchley">Chaz Brenchley</a> - Chaz</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_J._Ross">Deborah J. Ross</a> - Deborah</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Bell">Clare Bell</a> - Clare
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<h3 id="notes">Notes</h3>
<div class="notes">
<p>What is the focus of energy in your story? (<a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/writing-101/threads/8056">MICE quotient</a>)</p>
<p>What is a setting? Clare: Not only the ground on which the story is set, but the soil in which it grows. More than just a place.</p>
<p>The setting must make the writer want to share with the reader.</p>
<p>Chaz: all elements are one -- all developed in parallel. There are years of building understand of place. But each book is written in a different way.</p>
<p>Specific memories of story or a game are usually tied to a location.</p>
<p>How do you build a world when you can't go there? Deborah got resources from NASA for a space setting.</p>
<p><em>World Building</em> -- it depends on where you're coming, what comes first.</p>
<p>Clare: development of intelligence, disruptive technology TS: Start with an idea. Names are very important. A 'seed' idea. One can only be so alien before losing readers. Deborah: What do you have the most fun with? For her, <em>food</em>, it allows lots of personal, sensory and cultural detail. Also, gender roles and relationships with animals. Chaz: started as a mystery writer</p>
<p>People don't read the book you write -- they have their own reading. Chaz: if you have a problem, make a feature of it.</p>
<p>How does where you live, or the shifing of where you live, affect your stories? (e.g., affect of storms/weather)</p>
<p>&quot;All fiction is about outsiders and betrayal&quot; (extreme, but much is)</p>
<p>Character conflict or class with culture of origin, or character leaves culture, or stranger comes to power in the culture.</p>
<p>There should be a sense of time.</p>
<p>It's all about the headspace of the writer and the reader.</p>
<p>Inherent problems in spanning time in a single work -- that's a part of the story that must be addressed.</p>
<p>The perception of time can differ radically person to person, culture to culture.</p>
<p>Time leads to changes in the culture, if not also the landscape.</p>
<p>Some eras can't last too long (Industrial, Renaissance)</p>
<p>Avoid anachronisms, such as terms known to the reader but not the character.</p>
<p>An omniscient point of view can allow for language closer to the reader's.</p>
<p>There's a find line of balance between metaphor and language that's familiar to the reader -- like spice, don't use too much.</p>
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